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A T T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E V A D A , R E N O
The Natural History Museum
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Talk Overview
What do we do? Research, teaching, outreach
What do we have? Major collections
How are we supported? Grants, foundation support, volunteers, UNR college and
departmental support
How can we interact with a reserve?
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1. What do we do?
We are a repository for scientific specimens Collections are world-wide, many focus on the Great Basin
~60,000 spp 1890-present
~4500 spp 1851-present
~1,175 spp 1882-present
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1. What do we do? (cont.)
We support University teaching: Six courses primarily used the teaching lab and 17 courses
visited Multiple departments:
Biology, Natural Resources, Art, Woman in Science and Engineering Program, etc.
We support research projects: In 2015, twelve PIs have mentored both
undergraduate and graduate research using the collections
Six NSF-BIO funded projects use and contribute to the collections
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1. What do we do? (cont.)
We train resource managers: Great Basin Institute, Nevada
Department of Wildlife, others
We conduct K-12 outreach: We’ve reached many students
through organized visits and lab activities
Students Reached – 2014: 1383, 2015: 1803
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Recent consolidation, dramatic increase in use
We consolidated collections on-campus in 2013, and increase in use has been exponential
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2. Herbarium Collections
Full-time curator skilled in Great Basin plant identification
Digitization in progress, with a total of over 72,000 records available through the Intermountain Herbarium Network
~10,ooo specimens photographed
Next: georeferencing! 4,200 spp, ~92,000 specimens 1851 – present
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Example: our collections fill major US gaps
The distribution, by county, of online herbarium records in 2014, showing the distribution by percentile and density per km2. Note the very low number of specimens in Nevada and Western Utah,the center of the Great Basin floristic province. Reproduced from Tyler 2014
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2. Herp and Fish Collections
NSF funded curation of most of the liquid fish collections
~7000 herp specimens moved onto campus more recently
Greater than 80% of specimens are databased
Collections were queried over 200 times by researchers through the VertNet portal
436 spp, ~7,000 specimens 1934 - Present
213 spp, ~22,000 specimens 1930 - Present
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2. Bird and Mammal Collections
Contain some of the oldest specimens in Nevada with collections across every decade
Digitization through Arctos greater than 95% complete
328 spp 2,330 specimens 1882 - present
188 spp 3,540 specimens 1905 - present
2,270 eggs 80 nests
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2. Insect Collections
Collection includes specimens from across the United States and some tropical locations
~70% digitized using the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network
Working on increasing our local collections
~60,000 spp, 358,000 specimens 1890 - present
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2. Education Opportunities
Collections are used to enrich the experience of students taking courses
Museum devoted classroom with microscopes and high-tech visualization tools
Specialized plant identification courses
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2. Research Opportunities
Changes over time and space
Digitization allows access to researchers across the world
Herbarium assistance in identifying Great Basin plants
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Example Publications Using the Collections!
Patterns of evolutionary divergence in the bushy-tailed woodrat (Neotoma cinerea) across Western North America (Hornsby and Matocq 2014)
Annual plants change in size over a century of observations (Leger 2013)
Body size divergence between the reptiles of Nevada’s Anaho Island and the mainland around Pyramid Lake (Keehn et al. 2013)
Hybrid speciation and independent evolution in lineages of alpine butterflies (Nice et al. 2013)
Host conservatism, host shifts, and diversification across three trophic levels in two Neotropical forests (Rodriguez-Castaneda et al. 2012)
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3. Funding and Support
Some UNR support (CABNR, COS) for part-time employees and daily operations
State and federal grant support for herbarium curatorial activities
NSF support for curation of liquid collections, digitization of insect collection, and outreach
In-house courses and training fees support undergraduate workers in the herbarium
Undergraduate volunteers and interns Primarily external support for curatorial
and outreach activities, from individual and group donations
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4. How can we interact with a reserve?
Taxonomic support Repository for specimens Other ideas Broader impacts activities? A Reno face for the reserve? REU opportunities for students? Provide support for creating on-site collections, i.e. herbarium
of local plants?
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Museum Collection Curators
Co-Directors Beth Leger, Ph.D. – [email protected] Chris Feldman, Ph.D. – [email protected]
Invertebrates Lee Dyer, Ph.D. – [email protected]
Vertebrates Chris Feldman, Ph.D. – ophis @ unr.edu
Plants Arnold (Jerry) Tiehm, M.S. – [email protected]
Graduate Curatorial Assistants Mammals/Birds: Sarah Barga – [email protected] Herps/Fish: Erica Ely - [email protected]
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Thank You!
College of Agriculture Biotechnology and Natural Resources
College of Science Natural Resources and Environmental Science
Department Biology Department Mary S. Winter Charles H. Stout Foundation National Science Foundation Nevada Department of Wildlife Many, many volunteers!
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Questions?
http://www.naturalhistory.unr.edu